Re: Against Drift

The email from the listserve today was from a woman who had drifted away from her Catholic upbriging. That email can be accessed here.

She says:

“If I’m going to be a lapsed Catholic, I want it to be a product of reading and honest questioning, investigating the philosophical arguments for Catholicism, really narrowing down what I agree with.”

But when you became a Catholic, presumably at birth, was your faith a result of reading, questioning and investigation? You were just told things as if they were facts, and because you were young and you trusted your parents, you believed them.

Reading, questioning and investigating should be done before taking up a belief, certainly. But before embracing non-religious life? Why? It’s reasonable to have lack of belief and ritual as a default until you are convinced that a set of ideas has merit. By all means, investigate the religion you were brought up with. But never think that you owe any religion a thorough consideration of its holy texts and apologetic arguments before you decide you don’t believe. You didn’t read the entirety of gnome mythology before concluding that there probably aren’t gnomes in your garden. Remember that the burden of proof is on them.

In other words, come to the dark side: we have cookies. And we sleep in on Sundays.